UMS and PS3: Here's a riddle for you.

[The_Pastmaster]

Okay, so I am trying to connect my PS3 to my PC acting as a media server. I installed UMS and portforwarded it in ESET's firewall and booted it up.
Aaand nothing happens. It detects my PC and my router (I believe, IP seems to match up) but no PS3.

Now here's the kicker: If I disable the firewall completely everything works fine. Enable it again and everything stops working.

So what did I cock up?

Edit:
I set the protocol to TCP & UDP, Addresses to All, Local Port to 5001, Remote Port to All and set the application as the UMS exe.
I tried setting remote IP's to my PS3, trusted zones and things like that but nothing worked.
The only thing that has made UMS reliably detect my PS3 is disabling the firewall.

[Nadahar]

UMS relies on DLNA/uPnP which relies on multicast. This is probably where the problem lies, your firewall is probably blocking the multicast traffic.

If you manage to open the multicast traffic, there's still a possibility that transcoding won't work with a firewall active because it will prevent processes communicating with eachother via pipes.

In general, I've never understood why people use firewalls on private (as in not public) networks. I don't know your network configuration, but in most cases you are behind a router with NAT, which by default blocks any incoming traffic from the outside. In such cases there are simply no need for a firewall on a local computer since there's no way to get past the router for traffic from the internet. Portforwarded ports are the exception of course, but they are explicit just like they would have to be in your firewall configuration. If you need to regulate outgoing traffic, you could normally still do that in the router. If you are using a firewall to protect against other equipment on your private network, I would reconsider what's allowed on your private network. In most cases firewalls are simply not needed on private networks, and the DLNA standard are designed with this setup in mind,

[valib]

The problem seems to me that you set the firewall for UMS.exe but in fact you should set it for Java. The UMS.exe only starts the Java application.

[The_Pastmaster]

In general, I've never understood why people use firewalls on private (as in not public) networks. I don't know your network configuration, but in most cases you are behind a router with NAT, which by default blocks any incoming traffic from the outside. In such cases there are simply no need for a firewall on a local computer since there's no way to get past the router for traffic from the internet. Portforwarded ports are the exception of course, but they are explicit just like they would have to be in your firewall configuration. If you need to regulate outgoing traffic, you could normally still do that in the router. If you are using a firewall to protect against other equipment on your private network, I would reconsider what's allowed on your private network. In most cases firewalls are simply not needed on private networks, and the DLNA standard are designed with this setup in mind,

Most likely the most common reason: Ignorance. Networking isn't my strong side. I despise it on so many levels because most of the times it just refuses to do something then I do something and it magically works and I can not explain what I did to make it work. >:/

Thank you for your help and your advice. ^_^ I disabled my "local" firewall and let my router handle the firewall business from now on.

The problem seems to me that you set the firewall for UMS.exe but in fact you should set it for Java. The UMS.exe only starts the Java application.

Out of curiosity, do you know which java application is uses? Java has half a dozen of them.

[Nadahar]

A small word of caution that I forgot to mention: If you have IPv6 delivered from your ISP and activated in the router things change. There is no NAT in IPv6. The beauty of NAT is that it by default blocks all incoming traffic since it doesn't show the IP's on the inside and handles adress translations between the "private" and the "public" network. In IPv6 there's enough addresses for every device, so no address translation is needed and thus "private" networks will never be quite so private again. You can still use the firewall in the router for controlling access, but it's not "blocked by design" the way it is for IPv4 with NAT.